


trans!nico di angelo

by vaguelybuoyant (buoyantsaturn)



Category: Percy Jackson and the Olympians - Rick Riordan
Genre: Canon Compliant, Trans Character, Trans Nico di Angelo
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-02
Updated: 2018-10-02
Packaged: 2019-07-20 19:54:23
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,859
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16144364
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/buoyantsaturn/pseuds/vaguelybuoyant
Summary: this is an incomplete fic fragment up for grabs with credit. link this fic as a related work if you post your work on ao3 or give credit to buoyantsaturn or vaguewriting





	trans!nico di angelo

**Author's Note:**

> this is an incomplete fic fragment up for grabs with credit. link this fic as a related work if you post your work on ao3 or give credit to buoyantsaturn or vaguewriting

Nico - though not quite himself at this point in time - once spoke to someone during his and Bianca’s time at the Lotus Hotel. They were maybe a few years older than Bianca, and upon first introduction, Nico had had absolutely no idea the gender of the person he was speaking to, so he felt incredibly rude when speaking to them, unable to determine whether he should call them Sir or Ma’am.

Eventually, Nico had asked, afraid that he might have offended the person, but they only laughed. “Oh, sweetheart, I don’t identify as either gender,” the person said, and Nico was immediately confused. The two of them went on to have an extensive discussion regarding gender and sexuality - probably far too descriptive of a conversation for a ten year old - but Nico had never appreciated a discussion more. He had never before then received the opportunity to speak of his true feelings, and to have them validated by someone similar to him-- It had, in more ways than one, opened his eyes.

Nico had run off almost immediately after the conversation ended - though not before hugging his new friend - and went to find his sister. “Bianca!” he called, tugging on Bianca’s arm when he found her. “Bia, guess what? I’m a boy.”

Bianca had ran her fingers through her brother’s long, dark hair. “Nicci, what do you mean? You are not a boy, you’re my sister.”

Nico frowned. “No, Bia, I’m a boy. Really, I am! I made a friend, and they told me that I can act like whatever I feel like I am. They told me that they were born a boy, but now they aren’t anything. Did you know that a person does not have to have a gender?”

“Nicci, that’s silly,” Bianca told him. “Everybody has a gender, and you are a girl.”

Nico felt a stinging in the backs of his eyes. “Bia, please, listen to me! I am not a girl, I am a boy! I don’t like skirts and I don’t like my hair long, and I feel wrong, Bia.”

“That’s correct, Nicci, you are wrong,” Bianca had said sternly. “Because you are not a boy, I think you are tired, and you should go to sleep.”

“I am not tired!”

Bianca had taken her brother’s arm, dragging him up a few flights of stairs and pushing him into their shared room. “You should stay here until you are in your right mind.” She waited until Nico had let his guard down slightly before closing the door in his face, leaving him trapped in the room while Bianca waited on the other side.

Nico pounded on the door a few times, shouting for his sister through the door until his voice went raw. Nico turned to face the room, tears streaming down his cheeks. His eyes locked on the slightly ajar bathroom door before he rushed over, pulling at the drawers in the counter until he found a pair of scissors. He had looked in the mirror over the sink - his eyes and cheeks were red from crying, and his dark hair was a tangled mess that hung past his shoulders. Nico took the scissors in his hand, grabbing a handful of hair with the other, and connected the two.

In a matter of minutes, Nico’s hair was shorter than it had ever been. He’d never loved it more.

Nico returned to the door that led to the hallway, knocking gently against the wood. “Bianca?” he called through. In only a few seconds, the door opened slowly.

Bianca had gasped when she saw him. “Nicci, what did you do to your beautiful hair?” She reached out, though her hand froze in the air between them.

“I cut it,” Nico answered, “because boys do not have long hair.”

Bianca wrapped her arms around him. “Oh, Nicci, my dear sister, please stop acting this way.”

“I can’t, Bia,” Nico had responded, pushing his sister off of him. “I am not your sister, and I would appreciate it if you would stop calling me that. I am a boy, which means that I am your brother. Please, Bianca, I would like you to accept me like this.”

Bianca looked as though she were about to start crying. She hesitated for only a moment before nodding. “I-- I will try my best, Nicci.”

Nico’s eyes widened in surprise. “You will?” Nico wrapped his sister in a hug. “Thank you, Bia! Thank you!”

Bianca gently pulled Nico’s arms away. “Of course, my dear...brother,” she spoke like the word brother was the most difficult thing she’d ever had to say. “But, if you truly are a boy, you are going to need a new name. Nicci is a fine name for a girl, but does not do justice for a young man.”

Nico had burst into tears.

Every morning afterwards, when Nico awoke, he found boy’s clothes in his closet instead of girl’s, as if the hotel staff had somehow made Nico’s same discovery, and had begun treating him as a boy immediately.

It was a few weeks after Nico’s discovery and his official renaming that a man in a suit arrived at the front desk of the hotel, claiming that he was a lawyer and had arrived to take the two daughters of Maria di Angelo away. Nico had felt a pit growing in his stomach - no one would believe him, of course he could never pass as a boy, why did he let himself believe that he could? - but Bianca calmly approached the lawyer and said, “You’ve made a mistake. There is only one daughter of Maria. One daughter and one son.”

The lawyer’s eyes zeroed in on Nico as if they were scanning him for the truth. His eyes narrowed for a moment, and Nico thought he’d been found out, but the lawyer turned back to Bianca. “Daughter and son?” he repeated. “Bianca and…?”

“Nico,” Bianca answered.

The lawyer’s eyes found him again. “Nico, of course. There is a car waiting outside for the two of you. Please, right this way.” The lawyer swept his arm toward the front doors where hotel workers had the doors held open for them, and the siblings exited the building onto busy streets for the first time they’d ever remembered.

They attended a military school for about two weeks. Bianca had somehow acquired for Nico a small deck of trading cards that he’d remembered playing with at the hotel, but the more he shuffled the deck, the less he was remembering of the hotel.

No one at the school seemed to believe that Nico was anything other than a boy. The school had required that all new students see a doctor before being admitted, but while Bianca had been taken into a separate room for her check in, the lawyer had given the school official one harsh glare and they left Nico alone - for that, he was thankful.

While Bianca was being examined by a doctor, Nico watched as a woman crossed the hall, moving towards him - she was intimidating even from across the room, stepping in long, even strides, eyes seeming to be locked on Nico as she stared down her nose. She stopped directly in front of him, lip curling in disgust as she glanced over Nico’s appearance. She glared up at the lawyer still standing behind him. “See to it that this boy gets a regulation haircut. Immediately,” she spat. The lawyer nodded, waiting until the woman had walked away before gently placing a hand on Nico’s head.

“We will get your hair cut while we wait for your sister,” the lawyer told him. He led Nico into a nearby room that held only a single barber’s chair and a mirror on the wall. Nico took a seat when the lawyer prompted, and soon there was another man in the room, an electric razor in his hand that he used to begin shaving away at Nico’s choppily cut hair. When all was finished, Nico looked at himself in the mirror, finally seeing the boy he knew he was staring back at him.

The lawyer set a hand on Nico’s shoulder, leading him back out of the room. “Come, let’s find your sister, and then we will see about getting you a uniform.”

Nico didn’t remember the last time he’d been to school. He wasn’t sure how old he was, even, but he’d been placed in a fourth grade class, which must’ve meant that he was close to nine or ten years old. He wondered, though, if maybe he belonged in a lower grade, because he could barely understand what he was supposed to be learning. He couldn’t read nearly as well as the others in his class, and the math worksheets he was expected to complete were nearly impossible.

Thankfully, after only about a week of Nico and Bianca being in classes, the students were all given a break, the school having decided to throw a holiday dance for them. Nico had never been to a dance before, but he realized shortly after arriving to the gym that he’d much rather play with his Mythomagic cards than interact with anyone else in the room.

The ten minutes following were a blur to Nico. One of his teachers pulled him and Bianca from the dance, dragging them through the halls and out into the snowy woods, forcing them to the edge of a cliff before they were thrown into a mound of snow. By the time Nico could gather his thoughts again, their teacher was gone, and they were surrounded by a group of teenagers.

They led Bianca away, and when Nico tried to follow, they insisted that no boys were allowed. One of the girls, who seemed about Bianca’s age, asked him, “Isn’t this what you wanted?”

The camp they arrived at was overwhelming - or maybe that was the leftover excitement from meeting both Apollo and Artemis and finding out that everyone that surrounded him was a descendent of the Greek gods.

He was led away to ranch house, separated from his sister and the other girls that refused to interact with him, and left on a cot in some sort of infirmary. After maybe a minute or two, a boy a few years older than Nico ran into the room, a bow and quiver slung across his back and a bright smile on his face.

“Hi! Sorry, I hope you weren’t waiting long,” he said. “I’m Michael, I hear you’re new at camp!”

“Is that a bow?” Nico asked. “And arrows?”

“Oh, yeah!” Michael exclaimed. “Never go anywhere without ‘em. I’m the best archer in the Apollo cabin!”

“That’s so cool! I wanna learn archery!”

“You’ll get your chance soon enough,” Michael told him. “So, what’s your name, man?”

“Man? You...you think I’m a boy?” Nico said quietly, and Michael looked momentarily horrified.

“Uh, you are, aren’t you?”

“Yeah! My name’s Nico,” he answered.

“Alright, cool. Let’s get you checked out, make sure you’re not injured or anything, and then I’ll find somebody to help you get settled into your cabin, sound good?”

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is not intended to be completed by me, so please do not ask me to write more! This is a starting point, or a vague idea to use yourself. Go ahead. Use it. Message @vaguewriting on tumblr for more information about this idea specifically.


End file.
